Chambers Dictionary

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The tenth edition of The Chambers Dictionary of the English language was published in 2006 by Chambers Harrap Publishers. The 11th edition is due to be published in August 2008.

William Chambers and Robert Chambers, the original writers of The Chambers Dictionary, lived in a small town in the Scottish Borders called Peebles.

Originally published in 1901 as Chambers's Twentieth Century Dictionary, the dictionary is widely used by British crossword solvers and setters, and by Scrabble players. It contains many more dialectal, archaic, unconventional and eccentric words than its rivals, and is noted for its occasional wryly humorous definitions. Examples of such definitions include those for éclair ("a cake, long in shape but short in duration…") and middle-aged ("between youth and old age, variously reckoned to suit the reckoner").^[1] It is assumed these were originally smuggled in by subversive lexicographers—they were at one stage dropped by the publisher (e.g. "a long cake of choux pastry with a cream filling and chocolate or coffee icing"), but later reinstated as something of an attraction.

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^ Manley, Don [1986] (2001). "The Basic Advanced Cryptic Crossword", Chambers Crossword Manual, Third edition, Edinburgh: Chambers, p. 91. ISBN 0-550-12006-8. “If you pause to read Chambers while solving a puzzle, you may also find some quirky definitions in the best Johnsonian tradition: try ECLAIR and MIDDLE AGE for example.”